Women saving less for retirement than men, even if they don't leave work to have children

ELEANOR HALL: Australian women's lower superannuation levels are often put down to the fact that women take time off work to have children.

But research from the Australia Institute has found that this makes no difference and that the gender pay gap is to blame.

This report from Caitlyn Gribbin.

CAITLYN GRIBBIN: The Australia Institute looked at the earnings of women nurses, lawyers, finance analysts and retail workers compared to their male counterparts in the same industries.

What they found was a growing pay gap which is having a profound impact on women's' retirement savings.

Prue Cameron is the report's author.

PRUE CAMERON: When you look at those four case studies, even when a women works the same amount of time as a man, doesn't take any time out, they still at the end of a lifetime of work have lower superannuation savings than the average male.

CAITLYN GRIBBIN: And you didn't just examine female-dominated industries, you looked across the board?

PRUE CAMERON: Yes, we can assume in some of those so-called 'feminised occupations', the gender pay gap is even higher; in fact our conclusions are quite conservative.

CAITLYN GRIBBIN: Ms Cameron says even if women don't take time out of the workforce to have children or care for elderly relatives, they still end up with an average of 13 per cent less superannuation than men.

If women do take time out, they could end up with less than half the super of men.

Prue Cameron says that's directly related to the gender pay gap, with women earning, on average, 17.6 per cent less than men.

PRUE CAMERON: It has a devastating effect on women's earning potential over a lifetime and we see that reflected at the end of their lives when we look at their retirement incomes.

It's been really interesting to be discussing this with younger women who have gone through uni and come into the workforce, under the impression that you know all these gender issues were dealt with in '70s or the '80s and that you know there was a level playing field and they no longer had to be concerned around these issues and they're genuinely shocked.

CAITLYN GRIBBIN: Cate Wood from advocacy group Women in Super says the report should be a trigger for change.

CATE WOOD: It just demonstrates there's an underlying problem of pay difference but there are multiple other areas that impact on it and see a lot of women ending up with half the retirement savings of men.

We're hoping that with recent changes to the Workplace Gender Equality Act, which will require companies with more than 100 staff to report hard data in the future, that we will be much better able to analyse what's going on in the workplace and look at the gender outcomes and have strategies to assist and change that.